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Message:: [QUOTE="dltsrq, post: 4878648, member: 75482"]The deposition of Romulus Augustus in 476 is hard to beat as the beginning but some historians look to Constantine, who got the ball rolling. Other dates that come to mind are the Rescript of Honorius in 410, abandoning Britain, or even Muhammad's flight to Mecca in 622. My personal choice for the end is 1492 which encompases not only Columbus but the fall of the last Muslim state in western Europe. The conquest of Byzantium by the Ottomans in 1453 is another candidate, as is the publication of Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517. Numismatically, the coinage reform of Anastasius in 498 is seen by many as the break between "Roman" and "Byzantine" issues. At the other end, the Krause Standard Catalog of World Coins begins at 1601, conveniently close to the transition from hammered to machine-made coins. But as noted above, it's fluid and open to interpretation.[/QUOTE]